Mail Order Bride: Victorian Song Bird

By Tara McGinnis

Mail Order Bride: The Little Bird Sings, is a brand new Victorian mail order bride story about a high society woman who escapes an abusive husband, when he divorces her. She has a hard time surviving in London until she runs across a poster for a mail order bride and signs up, not knowing about any of the skills she’s sure she’ll need to survive on a remote ranch in California. She has to keep her secret about being divorced because she knows that with her lack of knowledge about basic household skills and also being ‘used’ goods, the rancher who might be her husband, would surely reject her. What follows is an internal struggle as she fights to survive in a new land, and with a new man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Hart
• Release date: May 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311768179

Book preview

Mail Order Bride: The Little Bird Sings

By

Tara McGinnis

Copyright 2014 Tara McGinnis

Smashwords Edition

Teresa shivered. The sun was going to set soon, and then it would get even colder. If she were still at home, she’d have a roaring fire going in the hearth, and dinner cooking on the stove.

However, no, she couldn’t think like that anymore. She wasn’t going to be at home from this day forward.

She rubbed her arms against the increasing chill, wishing that she’d at least had the foresight to grab a shawl or coat before fleeing from home.

As if Samuel would’ve allowed her to have one. One of his favorite things to tell her was that he owned everything in the house — every scrap of food, all of her possessions, even her.

Sure, Teresa didn’t have anyplace to go, now. She was walking without any purpose more than staying warm.

Nevertheless, she was lucky that she’d escaped, lucky that it hadn’t gone worse with Samuel.

Her marriage had started out just fine. Her parents and Samuel’s parents had become acquainted through some sort of social circumstances, and the marriage had been arranged.

Marry now and love will follow, Teresa’s mother had advised her, adjusting her daughter’s wedding veil. It wasn’t a novel concept. Teresa knew her mother and father had barely known each other when they first got married.

You can spend the rest of your lives together getting to know each other, her father had gruffly imparted, patting her arm as he walked her down the aisle.

Therefore, Teresa quickly learned Samuel’s likes and dislikes, what he expected of her, how to reasonably please him, and that he had a quick temper.

Lord, what a quick temper he had.

The first time she’d crossed him was when she’d disagreed with him over some trivial matter. Teresa couldn’t even remember anymore what it had been about, though she suspected it was over something as simple as the color towels they were going to get for their bathroom.

When she’d teasingly informed her husband that he was wrong and she was right, it was as if some lever had been reversed in him. She’d never been especially submissive toward him, but that exchange was the first time she’d joked around with him.

Samuel had been livid, raking her over the coals and digging his fingers so hard into her shoulder that it had left marks. Teresa hadn’t understood what she’d done wrong, but she chattered apology after apology that still did nothing to get his sharp fingers out of her tender flesh.

Everything had spiraled out of control from that single point.

Teresa had withdrawn into herself, trying to assess just what she had to do to keep her husband happy. She was cautious and jumpy, relieved when Samuel went out of town on business or to the country with his cousins to hunt.

However, as careful as she was, Teresa always seemed to irk Samuel in